Defying Miss Sahakian

Irritated by Miss Sahakian’s persistent detention for being late due to his sister’s slow eating habits, the narrator seeks revenge by mocking her tardiness in front of the class, leading to a week-long ban from school.

When l was young, the chauffeur would drive Papa, my sister Nora and me to our destinations. Nora had a habit of staring into space dreaming. She would not eat. Mama would say, ‘Nora eat!’ Nora would put a morsel in her mouth and continue staring into space. ‘Nora chew.’ Nora would chew and still stare into space. ‘Nora, swallow!’ This was all very agonizing to me for l would be late for school and have to go to detention after school each day I was late. I could not explain to Miss Sahakian, the teacher in charge of attendance, that my sister took a long time eating. Every morning I would say, “Sorry, l was stuck in a traffic jam.’” After a while Miss Sahakian just gave me a disdainful look and wrote, “Traffic Jam.” Every day l was detained after school and had to write, “I shall not be late for school, I shall not be late for school, I shall not…” twenty times. Still, every day l arrived late for school.

Time passed. It happened that Miss Sahakian became our classroom math teacher. She still greeted me each morning with a comment like, “Ten minutes late!” and wrote “Traffic Jam” on my late slip. She still gave me detention after school. She had become the albatross around my neck. It seemed l would never get rid of her taunts and detentions.

One morning my class waited patiently for her to come teach us. I looked at my watch. She was five minutes late, ten minutes late, twelve minutes late. Finally she walked into the room and walked up to her desk. It was too good to resist. I made a show of pushing up my sleeve, just like she did. Carefully I looked at my watch. In a loud voice, imitating hers, I piped out, “Fifteen minutes late!” The class burst out into uncontrollable hysterical giggles! She went berserk! Immediately she called for the janitor and demanded he remove this wretched child from her classroom! No! From the school compound post haste! I was banned from school for a whole week. Upon facing my father that evening, I was not afraid of any punishment he found fitting. I did not care. I had finally received just satisfaction and any punishment was well worth it!